Video: When Should a Valve Cover Be Replaced?

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Learn how to determine when to replace an engine valve cover, whether they're cracked, rusted or broken engine valve covers and more in this free auto-repair video.

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Video Transcript

Hi! My name is Nate. In these clips, we are going to talk about the proper way to remove and replace an engine valve cover that is cracked, excessively worn, rusted out or otherwise defective. In this clip we are going to talk about the proper way to determine if your valve cover needs to be replaced. Certain things can happen to a valve cover. First and foremost, they can be mechanically damaged. This one in particular happens to be cracked due to some wreckless repair jobs before I purchased the vehicle. They can also rust out. This one is not susceptible to rust being that it is cast aluminum. If it was stamped sheet metal, they do rust out over time. If it is not blatantly obvious where the leak is coming from, what I would suggest is go down to your local parts store an buy engine oil dye. Go ahead and dump it into the engine oil fill location and run the vehicle. What that do is it will show you the dye will appear if it happens to be leaking at any particular location if it requires replacing a valve cover or if it is just a gasket. Here I am going to show you how this one is actually mechanically damaged. As you can see this orange stuff here doesn't quite belong and the fuel cap is sitting a little funny. It has been damaged some how, some way by somebody. I am going to demonstrate it to you by popping it with a hammer and see if I can break this epoxy. This is where our leak is coming from. That worked very well. As you can see, somebody tried to rig it back together and it didn't quite to go the way they wanted it to.

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When Should a Valve Cover Be Replaced?

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